After the death of his mother, twelve-year-old Branko goes looking for his father, a traveling fiddler, in a nearby coastal town. Hungry, he snatches a fish from the local market, gets nabbed by the fish merchant, and is thrown into jail. Zora, the leader of a gang of five orphans, frees him. They have made a home for themselves in the ruins of a castle on a mountain overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Chased by the town's well-to-do children, and the local police, Zora's gang strikes back with ingenuity and camaraderie.